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Race 27 – La Grange Sprint Tri

Well this past weekend kicked off the final big swing to the end of the season. This was the first weekend of about 13 in a row where I will be out on the road for Team Chad. I am writing this post as I sit in the Nashville Airport ready to head to Houston, TX for my next two races this weekend. It was great to get back into the swing even though I can tell that my busy winter left me undertrained for the performance I am accustomed to.

The race was a 300 yard pool swing. I was late to register for this race as I was originally scheduled to head down to Florida. When I realized there were some closer races to home I switched the schedule. Because I was a late entry I found myself as nearly the last person to start. I can move up in the swim but I am always concerned that I am going to mess up the start timer by having a racer out of order. So because of this I was stationed back with the novice wave.

As we approached the front of the line I guess it appeared that I was not a novice. Nice to think I sort of look like an experienced triathlete. They bumped me up in front of the novice wave. My race started and pretty quickly I was on the heels of the swimmers in front. This race was a snake swim where you work yourself across the pool from left to right. As I got into the middle of the pool I started swimming into packs of swimmers/walkers. This was fine with me. A one time in my racing I would have been frustrated and rude about this. Now I am glad to see new people trying the sport.

I made my way out of the pool and ran the couple hundred yards to transition. The ride was on a nice course. The only memorable moment of the bike came as I was stuck behind a truck on the longest downhill section of the course. Riding upright and braking coming down a hill like that cost some time. Again, I just shrugged this off and got back into transition.

I knew that the part of my race that was going to hurt the most would be the run. It always does. Especially when you aren’t in great shape. Fortunately the weather was great. We were out on the run course in a bit of a pack which helped as a good distraction. I was thankful to come into the finish and knock out race 27.

Fortunately and a bit surprisingly I found myself on the podium. Prior to the award ceremony I thanked the race director for his generosity in accommodating me on late notice. He asked if I would like him to make an announcement about my journey. I told him that would be great if he could. As I climbed up on the podium he was so generous. The crowd was still fairly full and very responsive to his announcement.

We handed out a handful of cards that day for TC. The bike did it’s job on the course and at the post race festivities. We added mouthed 13.3 miles to the total. This brigs the total to 616.6 miles.